Disney has beautiful gardens that amaze visitors for days but for a combination of beauty and diversity of plants, The Harry P. Leu Gardens is the crown jewel of Orlando and Central Florida.

Just as you wouldn’t miss the Chicago Botanical Gardens in the windy city, you shouldn’t miss this Botanical Mecca if you visit our state. Allow plenty of time, wear comfortable shoes and bring extra batteries for your camera.

Robert Bowden is the director and fellow committee member who showed the FNGLA marketing team the highlights and stunning views and garden rooms.

Click this link to our Facebook Album for more Leu Garden Images.

Leu Gardens features many potted specimens and combination planters. They use the Thriller-Filler-Spiller concept to demonstrate how to make a beautiful container garden you would be happy to have on your porch or patio.

Profusion Zinnias are a disease resistant type on display throughout many sunny spots in the garden. The butterflies were plentiful and highly attracted to these zinnias.

Weddings are a big thing at Leu Gardens. They are booked over a year out. They have excellent facilities for multiple weddings and are located near downtown and near I-4 for easy access.

The largest formal rose garden in the south is a central feature of Leu Gardens.

Photographers flock to this garden to take images of plants and flowers that are used in magazines and books published all over the world. Fashion photographers find many beautiful settings at this garden.

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Saint Bernard's Lily - Anthericum saundersiae. This grass-like plant has long, narrow leaves that are dark green forming a clump with upright arching leaves.

Showy white flowers with yellow stamens persist throughout the year. Give it well drained soil and it grows to 3 feet or less. We have found that if you cut it to the ground every other year it sprouts back rejuvenated and to a similar size quickly. Use it as a 'THRILLER' in the center of a large combination planter for a long lived and trouble free focal plant. Mass plantings are very attractive especially when they are flowering heavily.

Clumps are well behaved and dependable. St Bernard’s Lily can thrive on rainfall alone once it is established. It will grow rapidly and flower more with some irrigation and fertilizer if you feel the need.

Anthericum tolerates a fair amount of shade and will grow as a companion to shade lovers like Impatiens and Persian Shield. Here is a link to the Top 10 Florida Friendly Shade Tolerant Plants.

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Common Name: Brazilian Red Hots Alternanthera

Colors: Pink Red Variegated

Who would have guessed this plant would become one of the most popular new plants for Florida gardeners? We get more requests for this plant and more reports of how well it performed than any other plant we grow. That is saying a lot. It really stands out and is so easy to grow. It has it’s best coloration in the full sun but can grow in partially shaded areas very well. 

The information below is from our searchable database. http://floridafriendlyplants.com/plant_database.asp

Optimal Light:
Sun
Mature Height:
2ft-3ft

Light Range:
Full/Part Sun
Mature Spread:
2ft-3ft

Soil Moisture:
Well-drained to Medium
Soil Texture:
Any

Salt Tolerance:
Med

Florida Native:
No
Florida Region:
C,S

Drought Tolerance:
High
Hardiness Zone:
9-11

Season of Color:
Year-round

Brazilian Red Hots - Alternanthera dentata 'Brazilian Red Hots', a Josephs Coat - grows 20 to 28 inches tall, and up to 18 inches wide and is trouble-free in full sun or partial shade. The bright foliage of this new favorite perennial for the Florida Friendly garden has been a welcome addition to garden designers. They stand tall in containers for sunny locations and make a great THRILLER component. Once established it is fairly drought tolerant. The color is most vibrant in full sun. Ball shaped white flowers stretch out above the foliage in mid winter. Cut these back as the days become longer in early spring for a vigorous flush of color. 1 Gallon Pots are available at most Home Depot garden centers today. Brazilian Red Hots is a great tall edging plant for your garden beds and is also available in the Warm Season in our Innovative SausEdge format for easy planting and an instant manicured look.

Check out the SausEdge video. You can 'slice your SausEdge' into smaller 'links' and stretch your dollars and get the same look and performance and more value. The hot pink and rose shades make these plants adaptable to use with cool or warm colors. They can be the 'THRILLER' in stunning and long lasting perennial combination containers mixed with Lantana, Pentas and many other sun loving annuals.

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Persian Shield – Strobilanthes dyerianus, is native to Myanmar and survives as a long lived easy to care for perennial in the right place in your garden. It is one of the Top 20 Florida Perennials and very suited to our subtropical climate and usually pest and problem free. It is nearly always available at Florida Home Depot Garden centers in the south and after freezing weather chances pass in north Florida. Not more than 3 hours of direct sun and less if you can fit it in a shady place. It likes Florida’s heat and humidity. Too much moisture and shade and it will stretch tall and tend to fall over in the heavy summer winds we get with afternoon storms. Pinch and the plant will stay full and bushy. To Pinch or Not to Pinch…

In South Florida, this Persian Shield barely noticed the few frosty nights. In central Florida, 80-90% of the tops were frozen and in North Florida I have not heard that so many survived this unusually cold winter.

Persian Shield is a dependable THRILLER component to containers designed to accent a shady part of your garden or patio.

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In this link on the History of Mona Lavender from Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens in South Africa you will see all the effort that went into developing this spectacular hybrid. Technically speaking, it is the result of a difficult crossing and selecting from thousands of plants. It was a long and arduous process of hand pollinating, germinating, growing and then selecting the best performers with the best looking plant and flowers. The tricky part was they were using a species that bloomed in the short days of the year – a winter bloomer - and crossing it with a species that bloomed in the long days of the year – a summer bloomer. Well it wasn’t that simple because Roger Jaques made crosses and back crosses many times and others have not been able to duplicate this combining of incompatible species. Florida gardeners are the main beneficiary of all this effort. Turns out Mona Lavender blooms year round here when protected from frost. It acts as a tropical perennial when the top is frosted as it quickly resprouts from the roots when the weather warms.

For this reason it is an ideal candidate the Pot-in-Pot garden.

It was a joy to have them blooming in my garden all winter. Pot-in-Pot Updated link. On the many nights when we had freezing temperatures I was able to lift the pots and put them in my garage. Mona Lavender is the perfect plant to use in rotations in your Pot-in-Pot in a container gardening since it flushes with flowers so many times throughout the year. Rotate it with another bloomer that fits your scheme when it has too many spent flowers. Pull the pot and pinch it back and in 2-4 weeks you can put it back in your container garden.  Look for Mona Lavender in the VIGORO perennial pots at these Florida Home Depot garden centers.

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If you want to change your annuals in your containers with the season or change them with Easter Lilies and maybe hardy mums in the fall and poinsettias at Christmas try this method.

Reasons to use this method:

1. where you have container perennials and want to add seasonal annuals
2. where you have container perennials and want to add holiday poinsettias
3. where you have container perennials and don’t want disturb the root systems
4. where you have container perennials and want move them to a different location and change the color theme with a different annual
5. where you want to save time in refreshing your containers
6. where you want to add a tender annual before the last frost free date and have the option to lift and protect it
7. where you need the ability to experiment with color in the design

Here is the link to the earlier Pot-in-Pot for Container Gardening post with more images and ideas.

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Looking back at 2009’s Flower Festival helps us get more great ideas we can enjoy in our own gardens. Check out the Ornamental Sweet Potatoes used in this cleaver display as a pumpkin patch. 

This year we will have new Ornamental Sweet Potato varieties called “Bright Ideas”. They will be available with Lime (chartreuse), Black and Rusty Red foliage. Plant them in the spring or summer and then place your pumpkins in the foliage for a fall pumpkin patch display. They will be available in April at most Florida Home Depot garden centers.

Ornamental Sweet Potatoes make great container and hanging basket plants. They are a SPILLER element in combination planters. Use the colors to echo colors in flowers or as contrast elements to make them pop.

2010 will surely be a great year at EPCOT for the Flowers. They just get better every year. Penny and Kim are talking a lot about the upcoming EPCOT Flower and Garden Festival on their blog over at The Dirt and in the Getaway section of the Tampa Tribune next Sunday.

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Pamela Crawford's Water-Wise Garden in Georgia is going to be featured in a spring issue of Southern Living.

Pamela wrote several Florida books while living in south Florida. Here is a link to her special containers, videos, books and designs.

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Montrose is a Sponsored Project Garden of The Garden Conservancy. This garden exudes design, color and imagination. You can purchase unusual plants they feature on their open garden days. Near Chapel Hill, N C.

Getting there....

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Select Coleus varieties for the long haul. Coleus often last as perennials in Florida if the winters are not extreme. One key is to grow varieties that are extremely late to flower. The second key is to find varieties that are not susceptible to leaf diseases. The leaf disease that is a problem is Downy Mildew. Chartreuse or yellow leaved varieties are most susceptible.

We sell varieties at The Home Depot in gallon pots that are late to bloom and disease resistant with vibrant colors. Below are just a few of our best varieties. All our varieties are suited to sun or shade.

Coleus Rustic Orange and Finger Paint in production.

Coleus Finger Paint sports red, yellow and a mosaic of red & yellow. Pinch out the color you desire the least of and customize the color patterns of your Finger Paint. The yellow in Finger Paint is not prone to disease.

Coleus Mariposa is a very large growing big leaved coleus. Pinch Mariposa before it gets too big and falls over in a windstorm. Mariposa becomes variegated in the fall with wide hot pink edges against dark red centers.

Coleus Peter's Wonder is very strong and very popular too.

Defiance is one of the all time best performing mildew resistant gold edged reds.

This is the new Versa Crimson Gold that is also downy mildew resistant. It flowers quicker than the vigorous growers we supply to The Home Depot but pinching the flowers is not much more trouble than pinching non-flowering tips of the vigorous varieties to keep them compact so the windstorms don't topple them. This Versa series upgrades the quick blooming and mildew prone Wizard Coleus series that has been so widely used for many years. We are trialing the other colors of Versa to see if they are mildew resistant too. We sure need a chartreuse that won't get mildew like the one pictured at the top of the page. The Versa implies versatility for use in sun or shade. When pinching you should not remove more than 1/3 the length of any of the stems of the plant. Pinch often and you will enjoy your coleus more. Experiment with staggering where and when you pinch parts of a plant so it always looks full and stays relatively compact and windstorm resistant. Another problem with coleus is that they eventually succumb to nematodes, microscopic parasitic root feeding worms. You can grow coleus in containers and they will remain nematode free. A good deterrent in your flower beds is organic soil. The good bugs (bacteria, fungus and other microorganisms) in organic soils kill nematodes. Consider growing coleus and other annuals in our Pot-in-Pot method and you will be able to keep them longer and lift them to protect from frost or while mulching and getting rid of weeds in the garden. With this method you can better focus the water and fertilizer to the plant and waste much less while saving time.

Growing coleus in containers is very popular. Here is a window box with gallon containers featuring Coleus Peter's Wonder, Sweet Potato Vine, a great Spiller, and the most beautiful and popular grass, Red Fountain Grass which is also commonly called Purple Fountain Grass. Pennesetum setaceum 'Rubrum'. Such a Thriller!